11/2/16

Samsung Electronics, which is striving to weather the recent Galaxy Note 7 crisis, is making all-out efforts to come back strong with its next flagship smartphone Galaxy S8 next year.

While rumors are piling up about the new Samsung phone, one of the drastic changes underway behind the scenes is a bezel-less, or edge-to-edge, display screen based on organic light-emitting diode technology.

A Samsung Display researcher declined to confirm the full-screen adoption for the upcoming Galaxy S8 but hinted that considerable resources are being poured into the development.

“Samsung Display would roll out a full-screen display whose display area ratio (a scale that measures space taken up by a display on the front part of a handset) reaches more than 90 percent next year,” said Park Won-sang, a principal engineer at the display-making unit of Samsung, during the iMiD 2016 display exhibition in Seoul last week.

Currently, the average display area ratio stands at about 80 percent among smartphones in the market. The researcher added Samsung may elevate the figure to 99 percent in the coming years, which means nearly every nook and corner of a handset is covered with a display panel.

During his presentation, he also showed a concept image of a Galaxy S7 Edge with a full screen lacking a home button on the bottom of the screen, saying the edge-to-edge display would allow almost all sensors, such as the fingerprint sensor, to be built under the screen.

A bezel-free device is one of the newest trends in the smartphone sector, with many handset makers planning to adopt the display for their next high-end models.

Apple is allegedly mulling to use the full-screen display for the iPhone 8 that is expected to become the first iPhone to adopt the OLED display.

Park also pointed out that the full-screen display would allow a more immersive viewing for virtual reality devices, especially for head mounted devices such as Samsung’s Gear VR and Google’s Daydream VR.

Another Samsung Display researcher who declined to be named added Samsung is also working on a bendable VR device with a flexible OLED display that can be bent to cover a user’s eyes completely.